Rick Perry must not be President...neither should Obama

Before I get into who I would support for the privilege of living in the White House one thing has to be pointed out...Americans need to wake up!  Anyone running for the office of president of the United States who supports in any fashion whatsoever the goals of Islamic supremacists should not have the opportunity to further such goals by the power associated with the oval office.  Islam should not be defined as a religion with 1st Amendment protections...they have but one goal to destroy western ideology and they'll do it by whatever deceptive means possible (How do you think Obama made it to the White House?).  Now it is revealed that the popular governor of Texas, Rick Perry has connections to some of the worst deceptors who claim to be of a religion of peace...former President George Bush also fell into the same trap.
As I write this Governor Perry popped up on the television where he ranted about promoted jobs.  Other candidates do the same...but while I'm on it...those people who give one liners about job creation are not sincere with their 'vote-for-me-verbiage' but it makes the sleeping audience feel good.  If a candidate is sincere they'll start out by describing the Carter-Bush (x2)-Clinton-Obama successes of sending jobs overseas while talking out of the sides of their mouths about promoting domestic jobs.  Liars!  The lot of them! But that 'vote-for-me' rhetoric won over their sleeping audiences.
Sorry I got side-tracked by the television but if you can remember just one thing about what I've been trying to say, "Never trust a Muslim or anyone claiming their friendship...Islam has a goal and they'll do anything to accomplish it.."  Wake up America, you've been asleep too long!  ~  Norman E. Hooben

Update November 8, 2011 ...See http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/08/here-is-aga-khan-perry-curriculum-scrubbed-from-web-cached-scrubbed-from-google-today.html

The following from: American Thinker
Perry's Problematic Pals
By Pamela Geller
Texas Governor Rick Perry announced Saturday that he is going to seek the Republican nomination for President, and in his speech declaring his candidacy, he sounded great: "we reject this President's unbridled fixation on taking more money out of the wallets and pocketbooks of American families and employers and giving it to a central government," Perry said. "'Spreading the wealth' punishes success while setting America on course to greater dependency on government. Washington's insatiable desire to spend our children's inheritance on failed 'stimulus' plans and other misguided economic theories have given us record debt and left us with far too many unemployed."
Perry promises to fix all that: "We'll create jobs. We'll get America working again. We'll create jobs and we'll build wealth, we'll truly educate and innovate in science, and in technology, engineering and math. We'll create the jobs and the progress needed to get America working again."
Sounds good. But Perry has been sucked into the propaganda vortex, and is now wielding his enormous power to influence changes in the schoolrooms and in the curricula to reflect a sharia compliant version of Islam. He is a friend of the Aga Khan, the multimillionaire head of the Ismailis, a Shi'ite sect of Islam that today proclaims its nonviolence but in ages past was the sect that gave rise to the Assassins. Perry has concluded at least two cooperation agreements between the state of Texas and the Ismailis, including a comprehensive program to feed children in Texas public schools and taqiyya nonsense about how Islam is a religion of peace. Another agreement stipulates that Texas officials will work with the Ismailis in the "fields of education, health sciences, natural disaster preparedness and recovery, culture and the environment." Perry let on that this was all about whitewashing Islam's bloody historical and modern-day record: "traditional Western education speaks little of the influence of Muslim scientists, scholars, throughout history, and for that matter the cultural treasures that stand today in testament to their wisdom."
It gets worse. Last March, Perry gave a speech in Dallas in the company of Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist was close to George W. Bush, and Perry's anti-tax, anti-Big Government rhetoric sounds like it's right out of Norquist's playbook. But there is a dark side to Norquist as well: Norquist's ties to Islamic supremacists and jihadists have been known for years. He and his Palestinian wife, Samah Alrayyes -- who was director of communications for his Islamic Free Market Institute until they married in 2005 -- are very active in "Muslim outreach." Six weeks after 9/11, The New Republic ran an exposé explaining how Norquist arranged for George W. Bush to meet with fifteen Islamic supremacists at the White House on September 26, 2001 -- to show how Muslims rejected terrorism.
The only problem was that the ones with Bush didn't. To Bush's left sat Dr. Yahya Basha, president of the American Muslim Council, an organization whose leaders have repeatedly called Hamas "freedom fighters." Also in attendance was Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who on the afternoon of September 11 told a Los Angeles public radio audience that "we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list." And sitting right next to President Bush was Muzammil Siddiqi, president of the Hamas-linked Islamic Society of North America, who once told a Muslim crowd chanting pro-Hezbollah slogans that "America has to learn if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come."
It was Norquist who ushered these silver-tongued jihadists into the Oval Office of an incurious president after the worst attack ever on American soil. Yet in December 2003, David Horowitz wrote that Norquist "has formed alliances with prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, and who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities. Equally troubling is that the arrests of these individuals and their exposure as agents of terrorism have not resulted in noticeable second thoughts on Grover's part or any meaningful effort to dissociate himself from his unsavory friends." Nor has Norquist changed course since then.
Grover Norquist was on the Islamic payroll before and after the carnage of September 11. Gaffney revealed Norquist's close ties to Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is now serving time in prison for financing jihad activity. In 2000, Alamoudi said at a rally, "I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody support Hamas here? ... Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas. I wished they added that I am also a supporter of Hezb'allah." Alamoudi was at that time head of the now-defunct "moderate" group known as American Muslim Council (AMC), and he was active in other Muslim groups in the U.S. that showed sympathy to or support for jihadists. And Alamoudi gave $50,000 to the lobbying group Janus-Merritt Strategies, which Norquist co-founded. Alamoudi also helped found Norquist's Islamic Institute with a $10,000 loan and a gift of another $10,000.
It was bad enough that Bush was close to Norquist. There is no way the GOP can again nominate anyone who is so completely and utterly clueless about the fifth column within. Ten years after 9/11, can't we nominate someone who can speak to the ominous threat posed by Islamic supremacists in this country? There are no secrets here, even if the stealth jihad is covert and sneaky. We know what they are doing. See their whole plan, and how to fight it, in my new book Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.
Rick Perry must not be the Republican nominee. Rick Perry must not be President. Have we not had enough of this systemic sedition?
Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America and Stop the Islamization of America (WND Books).

Calling All Americans...Stand by Sergeant Moran...Court Martial Obama!

This Obama thing has gone too far...Where the hell are the Americans?  Have we surrended already?
The news media, the police, the politicians, the military commanders... who the hell is in charge! a freak'n Kenyan communist ?  Hell Obama gets away with murdering Seal Team 6 and nobody does a damn thing about it...yeah, he killed them, just like Clinton killed Ron Brown... This crap has got to come to a screeching halt... Where do I sign up for the revolution?  Where's the nearest Green Dragon Tavern?  ~ Norman E. Hooben

Second US military officer refuses to serve until there is a professional examination of Obama’s “alleged” vital records. Staff sargeant Daryn J. Moran calls on every American to to execute citizens’ arrest of Obama for crimes committed

Posted on | August 14, 2011 

WE NEED TO GET THIS STORY OUT!Here is the email from Air Force Staff Sergeant Moran,
My name is Daryn J. Moran. I am a SSgt in the USAF stationed in Germany.
I called Pastor Manning of the Manning Report just recently (Youtube video posted below) to share my concern for our country. Boils down that I have not gone in to work last Thurs. and Fri. First time I was AWOL in nearly 13 years. Until B. Obama provides a birth certificate which stands up to professional examination, not even mentioning the seriousness of the fact that his father was never an American, I no longer serve the Armed Forces or take orders.
Basically, I’d rather follow Mr. Lakin, the ex-Army officer who went to Ft. Leavenworth, into war against our real enemies.
My family is in turmoil because I cannot change my heart to support Obama, or protect his criminality. I love America and the Constitution and stand against B. Obama. He should be arrested.
I will not be going to work Monday morning at Landstuhl. They haven’t even called my house yet, but they will come for me soon.
Daryn J. Moran
P.S., I don’t want to lose my freedom, but our freedom is already gone. Tell your friends and family I’m calling for Americans to arrest Obama. I can’t see how they won’t throw me in jail for it.
SSgt. Moran’s follow-up email seeking confirmation of his email posted above,
Tomorrow I’m not reporting for work again, and it is simply because B. Obama is a criminal. I am praying and marshaling all of my strength to resist.
Yet, I told my wife I would die for this issue. The Constitution and our country are worth it.
I only hope to tell people of the Lord as this battle ensues.
We reached out to Commander Charles Kerchner for comment and his response is as follows,
Once again we have an ordinary soldier standing up on his own volition to demand that the Usurper-in-Chief be investigated to determine Obama’s true legal identity in response to the mountain of evidence that Obama has committed birth certificate fraud, SSN fraud, draft registration fraud, and real estate fraud. Obama’s true legal identity is not conclusively known. This should not be necessary. Soldier in the ranks should not have to be demanding our leaders and Congress take action to investigate Obama. This should not be a bottom up action mode but a top down action mode to protect our country and the Constitution from a usurper. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of our military should be taking action. They took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC. It is now obvious that we have a domestic enemy of the Constitution in the Oval Office. The Joint Chiefs should call Congress and arrange for a private, secret meeting with the key leaders in Congress such as Speaker Boehner and tell them that what is going on in our country with the criminal activities in the White House with the placing of a forged Obama birth certificate onto the White House servers on 27 April 2011 is of great concern to them and of great concern for the morale and integrity of our military and their living up to their oath to support and defend the Constitution, not a criminal putative president. The Joint Chiefs of Staff should be telling Congress they must convene a congressional investigation to investigate the criminal charges of identity theft and others being made against Obama. The Joint Chiefs should give Congress 7-10 days to call for a congressional investigation of Obama as a result of the private, secret meeting. And if the Congress still does not act, then the Joint Chiefs of Staff should hold a public news conference and reveal that they have made a plea to Congress to act, and that Congress is still not acting, and make a new public demand on Congress to call for a congressional investigation of Obama and to ask for the support of the American people to demand that Congress launch a full investigation.

Air Force Staff Sergeant Refusing Orders Until Obama’s Eligibility Dealt With

The List...you will want to see this list...you will, you will, you will

Note: For those of you who came here before I took The List down because it was taking to long to load...and seemed to be making just about everything else slow.  For those who have never been here befor, The List loads much faster where it was originally posted...go for it here: Government Gone Wild

Iran is mouthing off and talking tough – issuing warnings to the United States and Israel

The following from Defense Tech
Iran Talks Cyber Tough
By Kevin Coleman — Defense Tech Cyberwarfare Correspondent

In case you haven’t see the news yet, Iran is mouthing off and talking tough – issuing warnings to the United States and Israel. If American or Israeli cyber spies attempt to wage an online campaign against Iran, the country’s state and intelligence agencies would combat any operations with their own “very strong” cyber defense capabilities, according to a piece by Iran’s state news agency. Mahmoud Ahmadi Bighash, a member of the Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy said, “In the cyber war, we (Iran) will definitely be the winner.”

Last year, Iran began recruiting cyber subject matter experts for a new initiative to enhance cyber defenses and build world class offensive cyber capabilities. Multiple Iranian government and military sources have claimed they are making considerable progress. Iran has made their efforts very public ; to send a message to the United States and Israel that Iran won’t be humiliated again with another cyber attack like Stuxnet — that worm is thought to have infected 30,000 Iranian IP addresses (mostly government).
Is this rhetoric or for real? Theoretically, in this short period of time Iran could have not only improved its defenses by applying missing patches or even isolating sensitive systems from the Internet along with many other defensive measures. It is difficult to believe Iran has conducted the research and intelligence gathering necessary to develop advanced cyber weapons from scratch, but it could have acquired/purchased an offensive cyber weapons from multiple sources.
Is Tehran actually thinking about declaring a cyber war with the United States and Israel? Time will tell, but clearly it has ratcheted up the cyber war of words.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2011/08/12/iran-talks-cyber-tough/#ixzz1V3P1Cach Defense.org 

WAR...I'm 95% right!

None of the possibilities I have outlined needs to become reality. But all of them could. The worst-case scenarios all share a common root cause: the failure of our politicians to recognize that, in the words of the late Enoch Powell, "the supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils." There must be a genuine recognition, both on the part of the state and of the people, that our problems are a result of an excessive reliance upon government and our foolish faith in the ability of legislation to resolve flaws in the human character. ~ Adam Yoshida

Depite all my warnings (after all who am I to pay attention to, I'm only right about 95% of the time), war like you've never seen before is coming your way.  Not long ago while waiting for the Congressman to arrive at a town hall meeting, I was asked about my predictions by a staff member.  After describing all the violence going around the world which I had predicted two or three years hence, the staff member then asked, "What's next?"  My immediate response was, "War."...and after a short pause added, "World or civil, take your pick."  Apparently I'm not the only ninety-five percenter hanging around waiting for first-blood.   According to the stories that follow we are too damn close for my comfort...actually hoping my guess falls in my 5% range. 
The first story is not appropriately titled for its not the Pentagon's plan, its Obama's plan...but you knew that (I hope).  In the next story, Will There Be War... of course there will, I'm 95% right!  ~ Norman E. Hooben
  

The following from Salon.com

The Pentagon's new China war plan

Despite budget woes, the military is preparing for a conflict with our biggest rival -- and we should be worried
By Stephen Glain

This summer, despite America’s continuing financial crisis, the Pentagon is effectively considering trading two military quagmires for the possibility of a third. Reducing its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan as it refocuses on Asia, Washington is not so much withdrawing forces from the Persian Gulf as it is redeploying them for a prospective war with its largest creditor, China.
According to the defense trade press, Pentagon officials are seeking ways to adapt a concept known as AirSea Battle specifically for China, debunking rote claims from Washington that it has no plans to thwart its emerging Asian rival. A recent article in Inside the Pentagon reported that a small group of U.S. Navy officers known as the China Integration Team "is hard at work applying the lessons of [AirSea Battle] to a potential conflict with China."
AirSea Battle, developed in the early 1990s and most recently codified in a 2009 Navy-Air Force classified memo, is a vehicle for conforming U.S. military power to address asymmetrical threats in the Western Pacific and the Persian Gulf -- code for China and Iran. (This alone raises a crucial point: If the U.S. has had nothing but trouble with asymmetrical warfare for the last 45 years, why should a war with China, or Iran for that matter, be any different?) It complements the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, a government white paper that precluded the rise of any "peer competitor" that might challenge U.S. dominance worldwide. The Planning Guidance is the Pentagon’s writ for control of what defense planners call "the global commons," a euphemism for the seaways, land bridges and air corridors that are the arteries of international commerce. For a foreign power to challenge this American dominion is to effectively declare war on the United States, and that is exactly what China appears to be doing in the South China Sea, a resource-rich and highly contested waterway in Southeast Asia.
It was in this spirit that Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Jim Amos, at a dinner hosted by the Center for a New American Security in late May, remarked that the wars in the Persian Gulf were denying Washington the resources it needed to cope with an increasingly assertive China. "We’d like to turn that around," he said. "I don't think we're there to [the extent] we need to be." In his candor, Amos became the latest U.S. military leader to speak about his service’s plans following the Afghanistan drawdown.
A U.S. mobilization in Asia is well underway, in faith with a spring 2001 Pentagon study called "Asia 2025," which identified China as a "persistent competitor of the United States," bent on "foreign military adventurism." Three years later, the U.S. government went public with a plan that called for a new chain of bases in Central Asia and the Middle East, in part to box in the People’s Republic. Similarly, the nuclear energy cooperation deal signed by the U.S. and India in 2008 was an obvious containment maneuver aimed at Beijing. In late March, press reports detailed a major buildup of American forces in Asia, including increased naval deployments and expansive cooperation with partner countries. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is forging ahead with a multi-year effort to transform Guam into its primary hub in the Pacific, an initiative so vast that John Pike of the Washington, D.C.-based GlobalSecurity.org has speculated that Washington wants to "run the planet from Guam and Diego Garcia by 2015."
Unlike America’s allies in Asia and Europe, however, China is not about to outsource its national security obligations to a foreign power, particularly when it comes to the South China Sea. There more than ever, and not without reason, Beijing identifies the U.S. not as a strategic partner but as an outright threat. In 2007, when China destroyed one of its weather satellites with a ballistic missile, it served as a warning to Washington after the ramming six years earlier of a U.S. spy plane by a Chinese fighter jet off the coast of Hainan Island. Though the crisis that followed was defused diplomatically, it was interpreted by some in Washington as vindication of the throaty Asia 2025. In fact, the clash followed a dramatic rise in the frequency of U.S. overflights in the area during the twilight of the Clinton years, which triggered a demarche from Beijing that slipped through the cracks of the transition to the Bush administration. The Hainan incident, as affair is known, was the inevitable outcome of a highly intrusive American surveillance regime.
In addition to China, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines all have competing claims on several clusters of South China Sea islands. Rather than intervening with quiet diplomacy to untangle this incendiary thicket, the U.S. has starkly sided against Beijing. In March 2010, when a Chinese official was quoted by Japanese media as identifying the region as a "core interest" of Chinese sovereignty, the White House retaliated by declaring that freedom of maritime navigation is a U.S. "national interest." As it turns out, according to the China scholars Nong Hong and Wenran Jiang, writing in the July 1 edition of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation’s China bulletin, the core interest to which the official referred was “the peaceful resolution” of the disputes in question. Despite this, the White House refuses to climb down. Two weeks ago, three U.S. Navy ships paid call on Vietnam, China’s ancient antagonist, for a weeklong joint exercise at a time of strained relations between Beijing and Hanoi, prompting a formal protest from the Chinese. In Manila last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointedly assured her hosts that the U.S. would honor its mutual defense pact with the Philippines and sell it new weaponry on discounted terms.
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government has encountered the practical limits of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. In its story about AirSea Battle and the China Integration Team, Inside the Pentagon revealed an oblique, if profound insight from Andrew Krepinevich, the highly regarded head of Washington’s Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. China, he said, is clearly jousting for control of the Western Pacific and "we have to decide whether we’re going to compete or not. If we’re not, then we have to be willing to accept the shift in the military balance." Otherwise, "the question is how to compete effectively."
Here is a noble appeal for Washington to match its commitments with the resources needed to sustain them, the absence of which has fueled the debt crisis that nearly reduced the United States to a mendicant state. Such are the crippling costs of a defense policy that makes global hegemony a mindless imperative.

Stephen Glain is a freelance writer with extensive experience as a foreign correspondent in Asia and the Middle East. He has written for the New Republic, the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His latest book, "State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America’s Empire," is just out from Crown. You can follow him on Twitter @sglain.

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The following from: American Thinker

Will There Be War?
By Adam Yoshida
An American credit downgrade. Europe in turmoil. Israel menaced by an Iran with nuclear ambitions. Mexican drug cartels run amok. Chinese ghost cities. With each passing day the news gets worse. To my amateur historian's eye, we seem to be drowning under the greatest flood of crisis, both international and domestic, since the 1930s. We all know how that ended. Will it be possible, in terrible 2010s, to resolve the world's problems without war? I'm not so certain.
About a decade ago, The National Review's John Derbyshire wrote that the odds of us, or our children, dying in a "genuine mass-mobilization-type, carriers-going-down-with-all-hands-type, flattened-cities-type war" were higher than most people believed. At the time, even after September 11^th, it didn't seem likely to come to pass -- at least in the short term.
Yet, even a decade ago, it was clear to some that we were headed towards some sort of cataclysm. Nations all over the world have made promises that, because they have been undermined by demographic change, cannot possibly be kept. It was always clear that, eventually, the laws of fixed numbers would catch up with us and that there would be a day of judgement. It's just that, until very recently, it had always appeared that it would be in a further future and that maybe -- just maybe -- the white heat of technological advance would propel us faster than the danger. It had always been my belief that the crisis would come, but that it would arrive much later -- perhaps in the third or fourth decade of the century when I would be, God willing, in a position to influence events directly. Alas, it increasingly appears that that will not be so. The world's problems are so entrenched and so far-reaching that it seems doubtful that they will be resolved without the resort by some to the expedient of war. Worse, it now seems possible that a cascade of conflict will wash over the entire world as it did some seven decades ago.
Let's consider just a few of the wars that seem possible to occur before this decade is out:
A Second Mexican War
I believe that a war involving the United States in the affairs of Mexico is all but inevitable. The existence of what appears to be becoming a failed state on the borders of the United States will compel some sort of military intervention. This is the tragic product of policies in both nations that have drained Mexico of much of its best human resources and allowed the growth of Mexican criminal organizations of vast strength.
Those who praise the work ethic of many of the millions of illegal aliens of Mexican origin in the United States come near to but fail to identify one of the true tragedies of the disastrous immigration policies of the United States: the sort of people who are now working at menial jobs on the margins of American society are just the sort people who might sustain and rebuild Mexican civil society. The absence of individuals of such character is one of the major factors that has allowed the drug cartels to gain such incredible power in Mexico.
Ultimately, I believe that this war will take one of two forms. In the first, the violence of the drug cartels will grow so extreme and the Mexican government so helpless in the face of it that they will ask for, and eventually receive, the intervention of the American armed forces. In the second, the cartels will capture the Mexican government which will eventual result in such a government being deposed by the United States.
A War of Chinese Distraction
I find it incredibly difficult to believe that more do not see that China's economic "miracle" is every bit as much a bubble as tech stocks in 1999 or real estate in 2006. China's export-driven growth has been financed by billions -- perhaps trillions -- in bad loans that have temporarily sustained enterprises that are, at best, marginally profitable. The house of cards built by the Chinese state will blow away and expose China as an unimaginably unequal nation where hundreds of millions still live in horrible subsistence-level conditions alongside a middle and upper class who enjoy a level of wealth and security beyond the imagination of an ordinary Chinese.
When the bubble pops -- and it will -- what choices will be available to the rulers of China? A misstep at that particular point will be fatal for them, living as they do in a nation of a billion and a half people with a history of fantastically bloody and brutal internal convulsions. Faced with bad debts on an unimaginable scale, falling demand for labor in the face of advances in robotics, and -- thanks to the one-child policy and selective abortions -- a massive surplus in young men, there will be one terrible temptation for China's leaders: war. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the present Chinese government -- and perhaps even the state itself -- can be sustained without resorting to external aggression. Democracy, given China's internal contradictions, would almost inevitably lead to economic collapse and civil war. Repression of internal dissent with force will trigger revolution. The party needs to open a release valve -- and the pressure will have nowhere to be released but over China's neighbors.
A Middle Eastern War
This one is obvious and well-known to all, even if current events have turned our attention away for the moment. Iran continues its quest for nuclear weapons. The pressure against Israel continues to intensify on all fronts. Unless Israel or the United States acts soon to prevent the advent of a nuclear-armed Iran, the best long-term result for the Middle East will be an atomic balance-of-terror with terrorist-sponsoring, murderous lunatics on one side. The worst-case scenario ends with a hundred million people dead.
A European War
I am surprised that few have commented on the potential for the economic situation within Europe to devolve into military confrontation. On the basis of historical precedent, it certainly seems possible to me. The members of the European Union, lacking the common bonds and sentiments that have allowed other federations to be successful in forming a common state, will not hesitate to betray each other if there is a real advantage to be gained by it. While most of Europe's current leaders do not appear to be the sort inclined to resolve matters through the use of force, is not impossible that the deepening of the crisis will result in the arrival of leaders who will.
This situation is complex and unpredictable, but let's just consider one scenario for how we might see a European conflict arise out of the present conditions. Imagine that the bailouts continue for several more years, dragging Germany and other solvent nations deeper and deeper into the morass of the south. Economic conditions in, for example, Greece continue to worsen. Eventually the Greek government is replaced -- through either legal or extra-legal means -- by a government intent on repudiating the debts of the nation. Such an act would likely trigger similar moves elsewhere and would, by such a point, totally ruin Germany. It is not hard to imagine Germans under such conditions -- threatened with being impoverished by spendthrift Southern Europeans -- advocating that an army be dispatched to Athens to ensure that payments were forthcoming. Who knows where that would end but, at that point, what would be the choice?
A Second Civil War
Finally, watching events unfold in the United States, it becomes impossible to rule out what was recently unthinkable: that the economic and political crisis will spin entirely out of control and eventually lead to some form of organized political violence. No one on either side desires it and practically everyone, at present, would argue that there is no plausible scenario leading to it. Yet the astute observer of history will recall that, as late as 1860, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was sitting in his office and reviewing plans for the construction of the Capitol Dome.
The unknown factor here is how far some are willing to go in defending a plainly nonviable welfare state. Perhaps some future president, stymied by the Congress, will attempt to resort to extra-constitutional means in order to continue funding benefits. Or maybe some future government, distorted by some political pressure or another, will impose taxes or regulations that some states consider to be intolerable. Though, I should say here, I consider it more likely that such a conflict would resemble the English Civil War and its conflict between the Crown and Parliament than it would the first American Civil War with its struggle among the states.
None of the possibilities I have outlined needs to become reality. But all of them could. The worst-case scenarios all share a common root cause: the failure of our politicians to recognize that, in the words of the late Enoch Powell, "the supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils." There must be a genuine recognition, both on the part of the state and of the people, that our problems are a result of an excessive reliance upon government and our foolish faith in the ability of legislation to resolve flaws in the human character. Governments have not only spent too much already, but they have set expectations for the future that will not be met. The question is not how we can distort math to make the impossible continue to seem possible; it is whether our obligations shall be unwound in an orderly or disorderly fashion. As the old economic maxim goes, "those things that can't continue won't." To that allow me to add that the impossible does not become possible through hope and wishes. Our leaders must act now. Either we will shake them, or worse days endure.